It's interesting to note how often you'll look on the HMV website and the prices are cheaper than their in-store prices. Given that P&P is pretty much free these days, the only inconvenience is having to wait to receive your order, whereas with a high street purchase you've got it straight away. For the price difference I don't mind waiting.

Upgraded my Season 2 set this morning after seeing how cheap they were on Amazon. My brother can finally have my R1 copy.

Before going for the 'universe' set you might want to check out how much it is to buy them all separately on Amazon. Given that the season sets are only £13.97 you'll probably find that it's cheaper to get the individual sets than it us to get the massive singular one.

I went into HMV today, looking for BSG S3 (which is sold out everywhere for some reason)and it was still £50 then I go to the sale bit and it was £15 so I bought it. Avoid using Amazon, bought the Star Trek Fans Collective thing to, the Captains Log one. Watching the DS9 disk first, could do without watching the Voyager/Enterprise one.

I'll probably buy the borg one. I won't buy the season boxsets most of the time, the captains log has two of my favourite episodes ever and I think its cool to hear the actors thoughts behind it. Avery Brooks always comes across as very genuine and passionate in his own way.

Have you ever listened to the cast commentaries on the B5 sets? It's funny to hear them banter about "who's is this guy?" or joke about the hush what would be expected whenever Delenn was speaking. I forget just which cast members were on which season's set. The way it worked was one episode had a cast commentary and one usually had JMS and a director. That was the way it was from S2 onward I think, though there might have been one other with JMS on it.

THe commentaries are one of the biggest reasons to have a DVD set. Obviously the improved clarity of video and audio is the reason, but getting the extra, "behind-the-scenes" info makes it all even mroe enjoyable.

I like commentaries, as long as they're not super serious or a proper commentary like "Oh yeah, we shot this with ---- and it cost us ----" then some totally crappy story. I remember the Phoenix Nights DVDs just had them talking generally about random crap while the show went on which was great.

The B5 commentaries are some of the best I've come across. Don't worry about getting bogged down in the technicalities of the show, it doesn't happen. The cast commentaries are usually them having a laugh telling anecdotes that sometimes do and don't relate to the episode at hand. The one thing that's blindingly obvious when you listen to them is that they're clearly having a load of fun doing them.

The JMS commentaries are fun too. Not as laugh out loud, but very interesting as he shares anecdotes and observations about whichever episode is at hand. The Sleeping in Light commentary is very, very good.

I really enjoyed the JMS commentaries, but the cast commentaries were hit or miss. Far too often, they're joking around to such a degree that I can't help but feel that they forgot they were recording a commentary track all together. I did like the cast commentary from the back end of season five, though.

Neroon said:
Have you ever listened to the cast commentaries on the B5 sets? It's funny to hear them banter about "who's is this guy?" or joke about the hush what would be expected whenever Delenn was speaking. I forget just which cast members were on which season's set. The way it worked was one episode had a cast commentary and one usually had JMS and a director. That was the way it was from S2 onward I think, though there might have been one other with JMS on it.

THe commentaries are one of the biggest reasons to have a DVD set. Obviously the improved clarity of video and audio is the reason, but getting the extra, "behind-the-scenes" info makes it all even mroe enjoyable.

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To be honest, the only episode I turned the commentary on for was the series finale.

When I marathon a series, I go through it first, and go through the episodes with commentary later, in case there are spoilers.

Some of the B5 extras are notorious for spoilers (anyone else remember the bigger spoiler from Divided Loyalties in the Season 2 introduction?), but the commentaries, as far as I can remember, don't give a great deal away, the cast ones at least. Joe's might give a few bits away though.

Hirogen Alpha said:
I really enjoyed the JMS commentaries, but the cast commentaries were hit or miss. Far too often, they're joking around to such a degree that I can't help but feel that they forgot they were recording a commentary track all together. I did like the cast commentary from the back end of season five, though.

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I agree. I think Jerry Doyle was the worst in that regard, which is why the S5 commentary, the only one without him, is the best. (Though it's been a long time since I listened to them, so my memory of each one isn't that good.)

Sorry if this is a bit off from the current topic here. I've been watching the show again, but pretty slowly this time. I also picked up the Gathering recently, which I had never seen before. I might end up getting the movie box set later on when I get the money.

The Gathering wasn't great, but nowhere near as bad as I have heard. The murder plot isn't particularly interesting, but it was nice to see some of the story threads touched on here.

Michael O'Hare seemed a lot more at ease in the Gathering than he did in the series. Not nearly as wooden. He doesn't really seem that way in the series again until he appears later on when he was with the rangers. He also seemed to have better chemistry with the women playing his girlfriend here than the one from the series. Though, Julia Nickson is much easier on the eyes.

When going back to season one, and now seeing him in the Gathering, I've always wanted to see what an alternate series with O'Hare remaining the lead would have been like.